An airliner conceals a particularly complex assembly of pipes serving for the routing of gases or liquids, for example for cooling engines, fuel supply, hydraulic brake system, etc. The various elements comprising these pipe networks must have very particular forms in order to mate to the contours of an airplane, and must have a strong resistance to pressure.
The assembly of these elements requires the manufacture of an assembly dummy specific to this pipe network. Any final evolution in the three-dimensional geometry of this pipe network therefore requires the creation of a new installation dummy. Now, the development time for a new airplane or a new solution tends to be short, rendering incompatible the time needed for manufacturing a new tooling with the time for creating a new pipe network.
Moreover, new airplane programs favor the use of oriented couplings allowing the prediction of a significant cost increase for the assembly dummies as well as the surface necessary for storing these dummies and the costs associated with this storage.